Sound and Complete Invariant-Based Heap Encodings (Technical Report)

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Esen, Zafer, Rümmer, Philipp, Weber, Tjark
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Esen, Zafer
Rümmer, Philipp
Weber, Tjark
author_facet Esen, Zafer
Rümmer, Philipp
Weber, Tjark
contents Verification of programs operating on heap-allocated data structures, for instance lists or trees, poses significant challenges due to the potentially unbounded size of such data structures. We present time-indexed heap invariants, a novel invariant-based heap encoding leveraging uninterpreted predicates and prophecy variables to reduce verification of heap-manipulating programs to verification of programs over integers only. Our encoding of heap is general and agnostic to specific data structures. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first heap invariant-based method that achieves both soundness and completeness. We provide formal proofs establishing the correctness of our encodings. Through an experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that time-indexed heap invariants significantly extend the capability of existing verification tools, allowing automatic verification of programs with heap that were previously out of reach for state-of-the-art tools.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_15844
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sound and Complete Invariant-Based Heap Encodings (Technical Report)
Esen, Zafer
Rümmer, Philipp
Weber, Tjark
Logic in Computer Science
F.3.1; D.2.4
Verification of programs operating on heap-allocated data structures, for instance lists or trees, poses significant challenges due to the potentially unbounded size of such data structures. We present time-indexed heap invariants, a novel invariant-based heap encoding leveraging uninterpreted predicates and prophecy variables to reduce verification of heap-manipulating programs to verification of programs over integers only. Our encoding of heap is general and agnostic to specific data structures. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first heap invariant-based method that achieves both soundness and completeness. We provide formal proofs establishing the correctness of our encodings. Through an experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that time-indexed heap invariants significantly extend the capability of existing verification tools, allowing automatic verification of programs with heap that were previously out of reach for state-of-the-art tools.
title Sound and Complete Invariant-Based Heap Encodings (Technical Report)
topic Logic in Computer Science
F.3.1; D.2.4
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15844